Which is why Facebook announced $250 million in development support. They're funding the chicken, so to speak. So while people lament Oculus' approach to closing off their garden, they are still doing more than anyone to ensure VR's success long-term.
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Jimquisition: Virtual Real Talk (Oct. 10th, 2016)
- Thread starter L~A
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Which is why Facebook announced $250 million in development support. They're funding the chicken, so to speak. So while people lament Oculus' approach to closing off their garden, they are still doing more than anyone to ensure VR's success long-term.
TheGraykid
Member
I think it's an argument against a lot of what vr is right now which is having you physically do what the player avatar would normally do within a video game. The problem is that these moments are often the least interesting part of games, so a lot of vr games are starting from the point of elaborating on an already uninteresting action.
For example reloading. The act of physically reloading isn't the interesting thing about reloading, the interesting thing about reloading is juggling reload times, resource management and enemy management. Having to make that decision on if you can reload now or if it's better to wait and gamble on killing the next enemy without running empty.
No amount of haptic feedback will ever bring the physical act of reloading anywhere near as interesting as the mind games that can come from reloading. That's why 99% of people would rather just press a button. It's not laziness, it that what these games want us to do is fundamentally uninteresting compared to other parts of the game. It's novel, but not that interesting long term.
rochellepaws
Member
Have to agree with Jim, it really does feel like a stealth return of motion games.
Oh, come on, Jim.
Your output is increasingly feeling like it's contrarian and pessimistic for the sake of it.
Because:
Profound is the perfect word for it.
Sucks that you "despise" the Vive, Jim, but I can't empathise when, for instance, just this weekend I had the 14th or 15th friend over to my house to try it out, and for the 14th or 15th time I watched someone pull off that headset with an expression of sheer awe and say "that is next level shit". And five months into owning it, there are new experiences every month which capture some new nuance of interacting with the environment, using a sword or a gun, scaring you or thrilling you, on a level traditional games wouldn't be able to capture. I still love traditional games and still use my ps4/pc more than the Vive, but the quality of that experience is something else.
Also "just use a reload button"? Really? Play Raw Data or VR zGame until you get smooth and fast at reloading manually and blasting fools without missing a beat - when you get this crazy sense of satisfaction you'd never get from reloading in a joypad game because you have actually, physically improved. It's just a different thing. That's how it improves on traditional game mechanics. It takes the mundane and makes it intimate, complex, interesting. It's deeper.
The barriers suck, absolutely, but I don't see why the product should be evaluated on that basis. So nobody can afford a SpaceX flight next year. That doesn't automatically make the experience bad.
PS I find the Rift disappointing and haven't tried a psvr yet
Your output is increasingly feeling like it's contrarian and pessimistic for the sake of it.
Because:
Profound is the perfect word for it.
Sucks that you "despise" the Vive, Jim, but I can't empathise when, for instance, just this weekend I had the 14th or 15th friend over to my house to try it out, and for the 14th or 15th time I watched someone pull off that headset with an expression of sheer awe and say "that is next level shit". And five months into owning it, there are new experiences every month which capture some new nuance of interacting with the environment, using a sword or a gun, scaring you or thrilling you, on a level traditional games wouldn't be able to capture. I still love traditional games and still use my ps4/pc more than the Vive, but the quality of that experience is something else.
Also "just use a reload button"? Really? Play Raw Data or VR zGame until you get smooth and fast at reloading manually and blasting fools without missing a beat - when you get this crazy sense of satisfaction you'd never get from reloading in a joypad game because you have actually, physically improved. It's just a different thing. That's how it improves on traditional game mechanics. It takes the mundane and makes it intimate, complex, interesting. It's deeper.
The barriers suck, absolutely, but I don't see why the product should be evaluated on that basis. So nobody can afford a SpaceX flight next year. That doesn't automatically make the experience bad.
PS I find the Rift disappointing and haven't tried a psvr yet
AndrewDean84xX
Banned
I guess I never really thought about it, but yeah. Better immersion doesn't mean better game play. From my limited experience with the Rift and Gear VR, nothing ever played very well.
So I guess I'd say my VR experience wasn't good for gaming, but neat for feeling someplace else.
So I guess I'd say my VR experience wasn't good for gaming, but neat for feeling someplace else.
SoundPulse
Banned
I don't believe VR will entirely go away, but rather, that it will dig out its own niche and generally stay there. At least for the foreseeable future. There's simply too much money in it for it to disappear altogether, unless it straight up bombs.
I've always viewed gaming as one of VR's least interesting applications, however. Things like its use in education, health care, and so on, are far more interesting to me.
Our focus next is on the Oculus Rift. We've talked about PSVR, but there's nothing concrete there.
I also don't get warning people that it's "the return of motion controls" when the concept of motion controls themselves was never an issue.
Nobody hated goofy-ass motion-based control schemes when they worked. Nobody hates DDR. Nobody hates light gun games.
amen to that
Nobody hated goofy-ass motion-based control schemes when they worked. Nobody hates DDR. Nobody hates light gun games.
UrbanRats said:
amen to that
Then I apologise, it was just a wrong impression on my side.
That was ridiculous too.
Only two people I know have Vives. Me and my best friend. Neither from rich backgrounds. Both saved hard to get a Vive. Both have myriad health problems.
Makes my blood boil. If you're going to start labeling things as "privilege products" then don't stop at vr.
The technology is in its infancy. I'm ok with likening it to an infant.
There are people who are better at projecting these things than your average video game message board user. They're overwhelmingly on board with this being a thing of the future, with many predicting it will be mainstream in as little as 10 years.
That's 10 years worth of enhancements, BTW. You have to project out that people will nail down some of the loose ends in that time. The technology WILL grow and the experience will get better.
You can liken it to the Neo Geo all you want, but it's a bad example. The Neo Geo didn't take off because it didn't offer anything unique. VR is a wholly different experience, with enough promise that enough people with enough money and vision won't let it just fade away without a decade of fighting to make it right.
It's closer to someone in the 70's trying to say that videogames won't catch on because it's too expensive to take off.
The motion controls are just one intermediate step, in my opinion. Touching the objects you see in the "reality" that surrounds you it's very straight forward. Motion controls are for now the best replacement for that and they manage to trick the brain pretty well when they are tracking 1:1.
I really wasn't criticizing users of Gaf. It was based more off an observation I've noticed that many people tend to downplay PSVR because it's the least "powerful" of all the headsets when good VR is a mix of many parts working well together.
I do admit though, that I do have a bias since I am in this industry and I want VR to do well.
I do.
Not sure whether I'm ever going to bother with VR. Maybe when they release .hack and the game is brain-controlled but apart from that...nah.
Wowfunhappy
Member
Why?
I think that part of the problem with these Roomscale VR experiences is that they aren't really "Video Games" as we traditionally think of them. They're something else—a new type of game.
(Basketball may not have been the best choice—it was just the first sport I thought of. Still, there are tons of really popular activities that have high barriers of entry. Ice Hockey, Golfing, etc.)
Alright, yeah, not everybody likes (or can even play) DDR and light gun games. It's an exaggeration, of course. But there's clearly value in control schemes beyond thumb movement, as arcade heads, racing sim fans, rhythm game fans, etc can attest to. Hell, anyone that's gone from playing console games to learning PC FPS controls should be able to recognize this.
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
If VR headsets are "Privilege Goggles" then all videogame consoles/high end PCs are Privilege Boxes.
I ain't exactly rich but I saved up and made room for the Vive because I had a blast with Tilt Brush and theBlu. If anything I'd personally love VR to re-introduce games like Myst and the like. I like that it offers cool but very different ideas.
Every impression of VR I get is that it's a glorified tech demo. You can try defending it however you want, but that's all it is right now. Why would I blow a good chunk of cash on a VR experience that doesn't deliver? I'd rather take the money and use it to improve my current, functional and enjoyable, game experience by expanding my library or giving my computer a big upgrade (hell, at $800 you can build a new one, especially if you already have parts from an existing system). VR tech is far too unrefined to be worth considering it anything besides a gimmick.
VR Porn on the other hand seems promising.
VR Porn on the other hand seems promising.
lol nice
How come you address the part I actually left out from the quote?
Light gun games can be fun for a few minutes but in the end, it's all gimmicks. Same with motion control like offered with the Wii. Just there, it was so bad I hated it the minute I started using it.
DDR is your typical arcade game and I agree that there can be value in different control schemes.
Great video
Normally people jump down your throat when you compare VR with 3DTV or motion controls, but they're not exactly chalk and cheese, and even though motion controls have improved in the last decade they're still not much fun
VR does a lot for immersion, but at the sacrifice of gameplay and mechanics, and when you're talking specifically about games, that matters
I think he hit the nail on the head when he said you can only be impressed by looking at the world behind you so many times before the thrill fades away, and once the novelty is gone all you're left with is an expensive headset that plays immersive Wii like shovelware
Normally people jump down your throat when you compare VR with 3DTV or motion controls, but they're not exactly chalk and cheese, and even though motion controls have improved in the last decade they're still not much fun
VR does a lot for immersion, but at the sacrifice of gameplay and mechanics, and when you're talking specifically about games, that matters
I think he hit the nail on the head when he said you can only be impressed by looking at the world behind you so many times before the thrill fades away, and once the novelty is gone all you're left with is an expensive headset that plays immersive Wii like shovelware
Sephiroth_VII
Member
Funny, I find it hard to agree with anything he said.
I mean sure, there are high barriers to entry, and people with physical handicaps will have a hard time playing many of the games. While that sucks for them, and I truly feel for them, it doesn't mean that VR is not a viable concept for those without a physical handicap, which is the vast majority of the population.
Same with the high barrier of entry. Sure most people can't afford/won't be bothered with this generation of VR, but so what? None of the big players are expecting this generation of VR to go mainstream; it's just a rudimentary first attempt. I still think they're justified in choosing to release this gen to the public though. They definitely add something worthwhile to the experience of playing a game(IMO).
Because it feels more real? I realize that may not be what everyone wants out of gaming, but it is what I want. Currently we're still doing fairly crude approximations of real world interactions, but it's certainly closer than "press square to reload".
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
And it provides these developers with the most important tool of all; player feedback
Zepp Twofist
Member
The fact that he is physically unable to use the only VR headset that offers anything I am interested in kind of makes this video irrelevant to me. His complaints were mostly nitpicking when it came to the Vive. Sure it takes room, health and money to set it up, but if you have all those things then you are left with what? That it is ugly? Sure, I'll give him that. That you get sweaty from using it? Well, if he didn't wear a full coat and 100 extra lbs maybe that wouldn't be as big of an issue.
I'll be the first to admit that VR has a long way to go until I would recommend anyone but an enthusiast to pick it up - especially a Vive - but he comes from the viewpoint of mainstream gaming, which I don't think will be the main use for a VR headset for a long time (or maybe even never).
I'll be the first to admit that VR has a long way to go until I would recommend anyone but an enthusiast to pick it up - especially a Vive - but he comes from the viewpoint of mainstream gaming, which I don't think will be the main use for a VR headset for a long time (or maybe even never).
agreed. if a must-play title comes along and non-videogames media picks up on it, could be big. but yeah, in terms of VR development it seems we're not there yet. next Christmas maybe.
Yup. I find it hard to believe that these games are the future when they aren't fun for more than a few minutes, and my legs start to get tired after standing in one spot for 30 minutes
Like Giant bomb said "this stuff is cool, just not $800 and rearrange an entire room cool"
I'm n in on his hatred for motion controls. They're shit , they've always been shit and I'm out until someone finds a way for they to be
A - Fun to use
B - Not shit
Plus room scale is a no go for me. Having to move my couches out the way and push the coffee table to the side to use Kinect was a ball ache, doing that with a headset on.....😂😂
A - Fun to use
B - Not shit
Plus room scale is a no go for me. Having to move my couches out the way and push the coffee table to the side to use Kinect was a ball ache, doing that with a headset on.....😂😂
Sephiroth_VII
Member
Have you tried them in VR?
You could, I dunno... Move them before you put it on?
Dirtyshubb
Member
So you would be forced to move your furniture while already using the headset and not before? Didnt realise that...
I immediately regret chiming in on r/vive about this same video. As soon as I said a few of his points were valid, I get slammed with downvotes etc.
Having been in the VR scene for years, he has a lot of good points, especially when it comes to people with vision problems, migraines, etc. There are a lot of people who are completely excluded from the vr experience and the industry as a whole wants to pretend they don't exist.
Overall though, I think first generation is not going to be mainstream. It won't be until 2nd gen that things start moving a bit more towards mainstream.
Having been in the VR scene for years, he has a lot of good points, especially when it comes to people with vision problems, migraines, etc. There are a lot of people who are completely excluded from the vr experience and the industry as a whole wants to pretend they don't exist.
Overall though, I think first generation is not going to be mainstream. It won't be until 2nd gen that things start moving a bit more towards mainstream.
bender
What time is it?
I'd like to try VR and still might via PSVR. It's the lowest cost option for me and has three games in the lineup that I'd like to play (Rez, SuperHyperCube, Polybuis). I'm also mostly interested in seated experiences. I do think VR would add a new level of immersion which is exciting.
Some of Jim's points hit home with me. I just can't imagine any of these devices being comfortable for anything more than a quick play sessions. I'm hyper sensitive to having apparel strapped to me. I can't war rings, watches, necklaces, etc because they feel suffocating.
Motion control is another downside for me. Wii Bowling was great but that was the highlight of the Wii Motion experience for me. Maybe it was me just being lazy but replacing button presses with gestures or IR pointing seemed overly cumbersome. I want to be at rest when playing games and motion controls typically take you out of your most relaxed positions. I'd really hoped we'd moved past motion controlled games but I do see the need in VR. At least the Rift and Oculus introduced new technology to this realm. Repurposing Move controller is a huge drag.
p.s. Wasn't Kinect a commercial success? I'd think if any of the big three HMD makers got that type of market penetration that they would be happy?
Some of Jim's points hit home with me. I just can't imagine any of these devices being comfortable for anything more than a quick play sessions. I'm hyper sensitive to having apparel strapped to me. I can't war rings, watches, necklaces, etc because they feel suffocating.
Motion control is another downside for me. Wii Bowling was great but that was the highlight of the Wii Motion experience for me. Maybe it was me just being lazy but replacing button presses with gestures or IR pointing seemed overly cumbersome. I want to be at rest when playing games and motion controls typically take you out of your most relaxed positions. I'd really hoped we'd moved past motion controlled games but I do see the need in VR. At least the Rift and Oculus introduced new technology to this realm. Repurposing Move controller is a huge drag.
p.s. Wasn't Kinect a commercial success? I'd think if any of the big three HMD makers got that type of market penetration that they would be happy?
God the loathsome "have you tried it" defense
This worked before most people had tried VR, but we're at a point now where we have lots of people who have both a) tried VR and b) don't think it's that impressive
motion controls are not fun, maybe some people like them, but the majority don't
Nintendo tried it, and then abandoned them for the next system, MS and Sony tried them, and then dropped them. The demographic that spend a lot of money on video games have shown they do not like motion controls
They're only back now because of VR, and even then there are a lot of people who are excited for VR but only if they can sit down and use a controller
I don't know why someone who dislikes motion controls will suddenly like them because now they have a headset on and are playing something mechanically identical to a Wii rail shooter
Pokemaniac
Member
The longer VR stays in this tech demo phase the more I'd worry about it's long term viability. If a couple years pass and there's still no sign of VR design maturing then there's a decent chance it will just fade away like many things before it.
Because those things that you left out of the quote are "motion controls that worked well". They go hand in hand.
I can't say I disagree. Tried it out at Gamescom and canceled my pre-order as soon as I get home. I was just so unimpressed, it was nowhere near as immersive as I was expecting (no, I wasn't expecting to be teleported, I was just so aware of what I was doing in the real world). The visuals were pretty bad and the experiences were just sort of flat or boring.
I disagree with calling them privilege goggles, though.
I disagree with calling them privilege goggles, though.
Personally I want VR to succeed because I want to use it to be transported to places such as museums, dangerous places, etc.
I know a lot of people say it needs its Mario 64 moment to succeed but what about playing Mario 64 using VR? Maybe walking about an arcade room with a Capcom or Taito collection of arcade machines where you actually walk up to a life-sized Bubble Bobble machine and play with another player?
I personally think VR experiences are there for the taking, it just depends on what devs do with it.
I know a lot of people say it needs its Mario 64 moment to succeed but what about playing Mario 64 using VR? Maybe walking about an arcade room with a Capcom or Taito collection of arcade machines where you actually walk up to a life-sized Bubble Bobble machine and play with another player?
I personally think VR experiences are there for the taking, it just depends on what devs do with it.
Substantial experiences exist already, even if they don't get the spotlight like the flashier stuff does, so it's hard for me to be worried.
I own rift, vive, and gear vr. Trying them out in a loud crowded venue and using them at home are completely different when it comes to immersion.
Also wanted to say he was spot on with the roomscale comment. I've been telling people in the industry this for so long and getting laughed at like they think everyone has these large areas to walk around in. Like Jim said, this is the real world and most people do not have the space. And it's nowhere near compelling enough to cause ppl to move somewhere bigger just for a larger room to walk around in.
Ah, I might have misread your statement since you didn't use a colon after "worked". So I was waiting for you to defend games apart from the two kinds you listed.
On a scale of immersive tech here, you have seated forward-facing gamepad stuff, then you have forward-facing VR controller stuff, then you have standing 360-degree VR controller stuff, then you have roomscale.
The true Big Deal with the Vive is standing 360-degree with VR controllers being essentially the minimum (like, "Room Setup" in SteamVR seemingly makes that the minimum, even if single-tracker seated is supported). I think this gets really overlooked because roomscale is better, but like 90% of the mechanical and immersion benefits are covered by a standing-area setup imo.
Of course, I'm talking on a pure tech level. Software is king and does most of the legwork when it comes to engaging the player, which is why the most immersive VR game to me so far has been a seated gamepad game.
ElRenoRaven
Member
I really do wonder how Jim gets into my head so much. He nailed all my thoughts perfectly. I was talking to a friend while watching going dude he's saying the same shit we've said.
It's not that simple. If all you've tried is Wii and PS Move then you haven't really used VR motion controls.
Just this weekend I had a developer friend try the Vive for the first time and he literally said "this 1:1 tracking is the biggest difference. It changes everything. My hands are actually my hands."
That's the difference. With the Vive at least the hand tracking is so good it's satisfying and fun, and plenty of developers have already leveraged that to great effect. It seriously sounds like Jim tried two Vive games and called it quits (I doubt he did though).
randomengine
Banned
Did you play a Neo Geo when it was on the market, brah?
I can tell you flat out that it did offer something unique. There were no other games like it you could experience at home, period. I knew someone who owned one and I went to a local game shop where you could play the thing by the minute. It was amazing, it was unique, and it blew everything else out of the water. VR doesn't even come close to the Neo Geo experience in its time.
Bl4ckSunsh1n3
Member
He's not wrong. VR is a niche thing. It will probably always be a niche thing, until they figure out how to make it something the public will accept. By most accounts it is a pretty cool niche thing, but it's niche nonetheless.
I don't think it flops as bad as Kinect or PS Move, but I don't think VR sets ever become something you find in 40 million living rooms.
I don't think it flops as bad as Kinect or PS Move, but I don't think VR sets ever become something you find in 40 million living rooms.
Give it 20 years and houses will have VR rooms instead of dining rooms.
Bl4ckSunsh1n3
Member
I hope you're joking.